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Camping in
the highlands of Santa Cruz
was an adventure: we were told very little about what we were doing and what
type of camping it was, only that we were to pack a daypack, overnight bag, and
we were going to see tortoises. Therefore, us all being more intense outdoorsy
types, we all expected that we would be hiking up to our campsite, setting up
tents or something in the middle of the woods, and camping. Well, it turned
out, we were at a lovely campsite with three cabins and two huge family tents that we took taxis to,
and could drop off stuff before we went on our hike, which was really just
walking down the dirt farming road down the mountain. Again, Dr. Meltzoff was
in the last car to arrive, leaving all of us in standing around confused,
trying to figure out what was going on until she got there (this has been a
recurring theme).

The elderly tortoise hanging out at the campsite.

Once she
arrived, and we figured out who was sleeping where and took pictures of an
older tortoise that was hanging around camp, we were introduced us to two of
the three horses that our guide, René, who owns the place, has. Initially, we
only interacted with two of the horses – two males, a larger beige one, who was
about five, and a smaller brown one, who was about a year and a half old. All
the horses had a white stripe down their face, and they were all siblings. The
guys immediately took to the horses, and the beige horse was extremely
interested in Tom, or more specifically, Tom’s rain coat. He kept sniffing,
licking, and even nibbling at Tom’s coat, to the extent that Tom had to take it
off and put aside to keep it from being destroyed. When René brought out a
saddle, we all joked that Tom should be the one to ride the beige horse,
because it took such a liking to him. It turns out, Tom is from rural southern Illinois, and actually
knows how to ride a horse well, and was able to trot circles around us.

Tom and Rene with Tom's new horse friend.

While Tom was all set with his new
horse friend, René mentioned towards the third horse, a female beige separate
from the others, and wanted to know who was going to ride her. We all made
huge, sidelong glances towards Marc – I think because he’s the only
non-American, and adventurous besides, we automatically volunteer him for the
more ambitious tasks – who then proceeded to lead the horse out of the brush
for saddling. Initially when Marc climbed on, the horse started to buck
nervously. René calmed her down, but, it turns out, after the rest of us
started on the hike, she threw Marc off, and would only accept René as her
rider. This made sense after it was explained that a little while ago, the
horse had escaped, was found by people who abused her, and was only returned to
René two week prior. The plan was to have everyone switch off and on both
horses as we went along, but we were only able to do so with Tom’s horse.

The mudpool of tortoises we meditated around.

The entire hike was wet (because it
was raining the whole time), and full of tortoises. The Galápagos Tortoises on Santa Cruz are the
largest of all the species: we saw males as big as the garbage bins out put out
on the curb. You can tell males and females apart in two ways: the males are
larger and have bumpy shells, and the females are smaller and have smooth
shells – worn down from being mounted while mating. At one point, we left the
horses tethered to a tree, while we ventured down what was either a long
forgotten trail through the underbrush, or a path René was making up as he went
along with his machete. Then, at the direction of Dr. Meltzoff, we meditated
around a big mud pool full of tortoises, which was… interesting. That night we
had a huge tuna – roasted over the campfire – for dinner, and did some amazing
stargazing. I saw more stars that I’ve seen in my entire life that night, and
you could just almost see the milky
way.

Anita Chapi, in the doorway of her home.

In the morning, we walked along the
road for about an hour to René’s mother-in-law’s house. Anita Chapi is eighty
years old, still farming and lugging her pineapples and plantains down to
market every week, and was one of the first settlers on the island. She’s been
there since 1959, and before that she lived in the Andes.
She has six daughters and one son, all of whom still live on the island, most
down in Puerto Ayora. She has twenty five grandchildren and six great
grandchildren. She is one amazing woman, and we go to talk to her for an hour
and a half, and sample some of her amazing pineapple. I know we could have
stayed much longer, but we had a boat to catch to go to Isabela. After a little
cab fiasco (one of the cabs drove off with a bag or two of ours, which was
panic-inducing, but we got them back), we all gathered down at the port, loaded
all our bags onto the boat, and we were off to Isabela!

It hardly seems possible that a
week and a half ago I was frantically submitting REU applications and eating at
the Pandan Room restaurant in Hackettstown. Really, it hardly seems possible
that I’m studying abroad in the Galápagos Islands
at this very moment, it is so fabulous. Yet here I am, sitting in this lovely
breezeway on the second floor of IOI¸ on the island of Isabela,
having the time of my life.

The room at La Casa Sol (top of the staircase)

Monday was a long day – a very,
very long day. It started at 5AM to leave at six to drive to Laguardia for my
10AM flight. We anticipated quite a lot of traffic, it being a Monday morning,
rush hour, and going through New York
City, but ironically, there was no traffic to speak
of. Security was a breeze (even if the layout of the airport wasn’t), so I was
sitting at my gate for a good three hours before takeoff to Miami. Almost everyone in the program was on
the same flight to Quito (save Marc, who’s Dutch, and took the later flight
because he was flying in from Europe), so we all were delighted when there was something wrong with the plane, causing
our flight to be delayed two hours while they found another one. The airport in
Quito was a
little confusing, but everything got through OK, and we set off to hour hostel
for the night, La Casa Sol.

La Casa Sol is this adorable little
hostel in Quito,
with a lobby building in front, and a courtyard with all the rooms surrounding
it. There were tiny little side offshoots, and probably about three buildings
total made up the establishment. The lobby building includes a kitchen, dining
room, souvenir shop, what appeared to be a small internet café, and a sitting
area, complete with fireplace and library. I ended up rooming with Alex, in one
of those offshoot rooms on the second floor, with our own staircase up to our
room. I am really glad that, on my post-Galápagos with Elise and Amanda, when
we’re in Quito,
we’re going to be staying here. It was really a shame that such a lovely place
served only as a pit-stop hotel.

The next morning, oh, the next
morning was a mess. Breakfast was fine – delicious actually. In Ecuador, it
seems, the standard breakfast is granola, fruit, and something that seems like
a thin yogurt, with a side of eggs, juice, and bread or toast (with butter and
jam). I could just have the granola part every day. I might switch to it,
actually, when back in the US,
if I can figure out how to make my yogurt that consistency. We loaded all our
stuff into the two vans, and took off through the busy Quito morning traffic to the airport. What we
didn’t realize until we got there was that we had somehow left Amanda, and
Sarah Meltzoff, our professor and guide, at La Casa Sol. We all instinctively
turned to Marc to lead us, mainly because he has the best Spanish (languages
must come naturally to him – he’s fluent in three), and also because he has the
most experience in international travel. Of course, he really didn’t have any
idea what he was doing, because Galápagos flights have special rules, in
addition to the Quito airport being confusing and a madhouse, but he could best
understand what our drivers were saying to us.

First we had to go through a
special inspection station, to make sure we weren’t bringing in any plant or
animal material that might get onto the islands. That part was obvious. After
that, we just sort of stood around confused until Dr. Meltzoff got there, and
things didn’t really get any clearer. There was a lot of standing around and
blocking lines while Dr. Meltzoff got all of our paperwork “clear,” and then we
all slowly had our bags checked. Then there was a fiasco where the airline
people at one desk were telling us to go to another desk for our boarding
passes, but that was really just for overweight baggage people, and we should
have gone to another desk, etc. etc. Let’s just say, when we all got through
security and all we had to do wasboard
the plane, we all cheered.

Ready to snorkel!
Left to right: Marc, Tom, Katie, Amanda.

We were all scattered throughout
the back of the plane, though Elise and I both had aisle seats in the same row,
so that was nice. The result of the aisle seat was that I couldn’t plaster my
face to the window as we approached the islands, and had to be content with
catching glimpses of the islands from three seats over at the right angle. When
we were all off the plane and on the tarmac (the airport on Isla Baltra is
pretty much a runway with a little open air building that resembles a picnic
pavilion to serve as the terminal), we all let out a celebratory cry, doing a
little happy dance as much as we could laden down with luggage. After passing
through the park desk with our special paperwork, we grabbed our snorkel gear
out of our bags, and set forth on a bus to the dock while our bags went ahead
of us to the hotel in Puerto Ayora on Isla Santa Cruz.

Yes, all snorkels are like this.

The snorkeling was excellent, even
if I was a little cold in just my dive skin (the water in the Galápagos comes
up from Antarctica on the Humbolt current, so
despite being on the equator, the water temperature is in the 60s). You know
how everyone is always so enthralled with the terrestrial life of the Galapagos
– the tortoises, iguanas, finches, etc? Well, the marine life of the
archipelago blows it out of the water (no pun intended). On our first snorkel, there were comb jellyfish
everywhere, the several species of the biggest parrotfish I’ve ever seen in my
life, angelfish of all kinds everywhere, other species of fish besides that I
can’t ID, a friendly sea lion, and a school of white-tip sharks, which is
pretty rare, even for the Galápagos. The second snorkel was too deep with too
strong of a current to see anything, though apparently that’s the spot to see schools of hammerheads.
The third snorkel was just as spectacular as the first. I kept waiting to wake
up from the amazing dream I was having.That night, after we checked into the
hotel, we went to the local restaurant strip, where you could only find locals,
tourists “in the know,” and, of course, our big, obvious group. We stuck out
like a sore thumb, but we didn’t care. We were having the time of our lives.

The view from in the water on our first snorkel.

In the morning, we went on a hike
up to a canyon just outside of town filled with seawater. The landscape of the
Galápagos, especially the lowlands and the smaller, more desolate islands, is
striking, especially when seen from the water. Across the landscape are dozens
and dozens of tree and candelabra cacti, with the same sort of arid brush and
thorns you expect out of a dessert. Below them lie lava rock and soil, and
below that the sea. To see all that in the same picture, it’s confusing, and
doesn’t not really compute the first several times you lay eyes on it. It’s
something about seeing a cactus surrounded by a huge body of water that just
doesn’t make sense. This expanse of cacti was what we were supposed to be
seeing on our way up to this canyon, but we were all to busy watching our feet
and trying not to trip over the lava rock all over the path.

The fabulous canyon swimming hole.

Eventually we reached the canyon:
the walls are ten metres high above the waterline, and the water is supposed to
extend thirty metres down, though it looked like much less due to a dense
sulfur and salt layer that formed about ten metres down, which resembled white
sand. The water was cool, but refreshing rather than uncomfortable. We swam
around for a good hour – us, the other tourists and locals, and the parrotfish
and blennies that occupied the pool. Almost all of us clamored up the wall to
designated jumping ledges in order to throw ourselves in the water: on high
one, one low one, with the high one being the only one anyone used once it was
discovered we could get up there. I went off the high one, which was about two
thirds of the way up the canyon wall. There’s nothing quite like jumping from
eight metres up off a canyon wall into a deep, saltwater pool in the Galápagos.

A sea lion that played with us for the longest time.

After our
fun in the canyon, we went on another snorkel trip. These three snorkels were
just as amazing as the previous day, this time with particularly playful sea
lions, and the dynamic of a sea lion family – which, probably not surprisingly,
resembles any sort of human situation involving a small child whining for a
parent to do something with them, the parent eventually does it, and suddenly
the child has lost interest. We also caught a marine iguana under the water
eating algae, and exceptionally rare event that many that make it to the
Galápagos never see. We snorkeled along the shallows with an abundance of sea
lion pups and rays, and in a couple of large sea caves with astounding rock
structures (Michelle, if you’re reading this, that’s for you). That night, we
had Galápagos pizza – which is, sadly, better than any pizza you can get in Miami (Dear Miami,
Pizza is an American food. You’re an American city. The Ecuadorian people in
the middle of the Pacific Ocean can make
better pizza. What’s wrong with this picture?) – and then, gelato. I, and many
others, had the most amazing passionfruit gelato on the planet; I would not be
surprised if the passionfruit were picked in the highlands that morning. It was
a great ending to an amazing first two days.